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climate disasters
As Trump and Cabinet Thrash Climate, Coalition Demands Dems Hold the Line Against Big Oil Immunity
"What's at stake here isn't just who pays for climate disasters—it's whether our democracy allows powerful industries to simply rewrite the rules when justice catches up to them," said the communications director at Make Polluters Pay.
Mar 13, 2025
Over 190 groups are urging Democrats in Congress resist any attempts by Big Oil to evade potential legal liability amid the growing number of legal and legislative efforts aimed at holding major polluters accountable for their role in the climate crisis.
In a Thursday letter addressed to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the groups urge Democratic lawmakers "to proactively and affirmatively reject any proposal that would shield fossil fuel companies" from those efforts.
A quarter of U.S. residents live in a state or locality that is "taking ExxonMobil and other major fossil fuel companies to court to hold them accountable for this deception and make them pay for the damage their climate lies have caused," according to the letter. Maine, for example, became the eighth U.S. state to sue major oil and gas companies for deceiving the public about their products' role in the climate crisis.
The letter signatories include a long list of green groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity and Extinction Rebellion US, as well as the American Association of Justice and other nonprofits.
The Supreme Court on Monday denied a request by a coalition of Republican state attorneys general aimed at preventing oil and gas companies from facing these types of lawsuits. Trump has also vowed to block climate litigation aimed at Big Oil.
In their letter, the groups also point to a number of efforts, some successful, to pass what are known as "superfund laws," which force privately owned polluters to help cover the costs of protecting public infrastructure from climate-fueled threats. Oil and gas companies have lobbied against the passage of these laws.
"What's at stake here isn't just who pays for climate disasters—it's whether our democracy allows powerful industries to simply rewrite the rules when justice catches up to them," said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director of Make Polluters Pay—one of the letter's signatories—in a Thursday statement.
"Lawmakers must decisively reject any attempt by the fossil fuel industry to evade accountability and ensure both justice today and the right of future generations to hold polluters responsible for decades of deception," DiPaola continued.
The letter references episodes when "fossil fuel companies and their allies" tried to "secure a blanket waiver of liability for their industry."
In 2017, a carbon tax plan spearheaded by a group of Republican statesmen and economists proposed stopping potential lawsuits against oil companies and other corporations that release greenhouse gases, and in 2020, the fossil fuel industry tried to quietly include a liability waiver for itself in a government Covid-19 relief package, according to the outlet Drilled.
The letter also highlights that 60 Democratic House members urged leadership to categorically oppose efforts to "immunize polluters" in response to the latter effort.
"We have reason to believe that the fossil fuel industry and its allies will use the chaos and overreach of the new Trump administration to attempt yet again to pass some form of liability waiver and shield themselves from facing consequences for their decades of pollution and deception," the letter states. "That effort—no matter what form it takes—must not be allowed to succeed."
The demand from these groups comes amid broader attacks on climate and environmental protections from the Trump administration
On Wednesday, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a series of actions to roll back environmental regulation impacting issues ranging from rules on pollution from power plants to regulations for vehicles.
On his first day in office, Trump signed executive orders withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement and initiated plans to open up Alaskan wilderness to drilling and mining.
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Helene and Milton Prove It's Time to Make Polluters Pay for Climate Disasters
Recent polling shows that 70% of US voters support making oil and gas companies pay their fair share for these fossil fuel-driven catastrophes. What are we waiting for?
Oct 10, 2024
“There would be much more violent weather – more storms, more droughts, more deluges.”
That prophecy isn’t from the Book of Revelation, but from a confidential 1989 Shell Oil memo the company commissioned to better understand what global warming could mean for their business in the decades to come.
Today, the sentence reads like a daily weather report. In the last few weeks, we’ve seen the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene, a “deluge” that wiped out entire towns and sent homes and semi-trucks spiraling down rivers of mud, and now Hurricane Milton, one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded. In Nepal, extreme flooding there has claimed over more than 200 lives and left parts of the capitol underwater. Meanwhile, the Amazon is facing its “worst drought on record,” further endangering what scientists have referred to as the “lungs of the world.”
“Civilisation could prove a fragile thing,” wrote the authors of the 1989 Shell memo. Indeed. As we’ve seen over the last few months, even supposed climate havens, like Asheville, NC, have been undone by extreme weather. We’ve entered an age where our civilization, no matter where we live, will likely be in need of constant upkeep and repair in the face of ever worsening climate disasters. Rebuilding our communities, and strengthening them for the challenges ahead, will be an ongoing struggle for generations to come.
For more than 70 years the fossil fuel industry has continued to rake in profits without paying a single dollar for the damage they knew their product was causing to our climate and communities.
Which raises the question: how are we going to pay for all of this? Early estimates put the damage of Hurricane Helene at over $200 billion and Hurricane Milton at $175 billion, astronomical figures that still can’t begin to calculate the cost of the lives lost and communities upended. That’s on top of the more than $150 billion a year the US government estimates Americans are already paying for extreme weather events. And that’s a low end estimate. According to a study released earlier this year in Nature concluded that the cost of climate damages to the global economy could reach $38 trillion a year by 2050.
Right now, those costs are coming out of one place in particular: our pockets. Even if your home hasn’t been washed away by a flood, you’re likely paying more for your home insurance due to others that have. Even if your farm hasn’t been wrecked by drought, you’re now paying more for your groceries at the supermarket. The dollars your town had set aside for a new school? They’re now being spent to rebuild roads or repair a bridge that got wiped out by yet another “100-year” flood.
Faced with these ever mounting costs, some local leaders are turning to a different solution: making polluters pay their fair share for the damage they’ve done. After all, that 1989 Shell memo isn’t the only example that fossil fuel companies knew exactly the consequences of the ongoing use of their product. As early as the 1950s, oil and gas companies knew about the dangers of global warming, but instead of warning the public and moving to clean energy, they went on to spread lies and disinformation to protect their profits.
Put another way, for more than 70 years the fossil fuel industry has continued to rake in profits without paying a single dollar for the damage they knew their product was causing to our climate and communities. Instead, they’ve very intentionally “externalized” those costs onto the rest of us, not only in the form of climate impacts, but in terms of our health, local environments, and more.
Now the bill is coming due. This May, Vermont became the first state in the country to pass a Climate Superfund Act that will make oil and gas companies pay into a fund that can be used for climate adaptation and disaster response. Five other states are debating similar legislation, including in New York, where legislators passed a climate superfund bill in June and are now waiting on Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature (last week, activists delivered more than 127,000 signatures to the Governor’s office demanding she stop dragging her feet and sign the bill into law). In September, Senator Van Hollen and Representative Jerry Nadler introduced a federal Climate Superfund bill that would collect $1 trillion from oil and gas companies to be used for relief and resiliency efforts nationwide.
The push for state and federal climate superfund bills is running in parallel to the now dozens of city, state, county, and Tribal governments who have filed lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry for climate lies and damages. These lawsuits could recoup even more money from oil and gas companies for damages, as well as uncover yet more evidence of their ongoing fraud and deception. In addition to these civil cases, some experts and attorneys are now proposing bringing criminal charges against oil companies for the “wrongful deaths” associated with extreme weather events (expect to hear more about climate homicide in the months ahead).
The devastation caused by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and similar climate disasters around the world, demands more of a response than the “thoughts and prayers” offered by politicians still in the pocket of Big Oil. Recent polling shows that 70% of US voters support making oil and gas companies pay their fair share for climate damages. It’s time for our leaders to answer that call and make polluters pay.
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In First, Vermont Ready to Make Fossil Fuel Giants Pay for Climate Damage
"If you contributed to a mess, you should play a role in cleaning it up," said one supporter of a bill that could be a model for other states to follow.
May 09, 2024
This week, Vermont became the nation's first state to pass legislation requiring fossil fuel giants to pay for the damage and disruption caused by their planet-warming products, offering a model for others to follow.
While it remains likely Republican Gov. Phil Scott will veto the bill passed by the state Senate in March and the House on Monday, the legislation—now heading for his desk—was celebrated as a blueprint for others to imitate.
As Vermont Publicreported:
Modeled after the federal Superfund program, the policy would require companies like ExxonMobil Corporation and Shell to pay Vermont a share of what climate change has cost the state in recent decades. Vermont would use those payments to establish a program to fund recovery from climate-fueled disasters and work to adapt to the state’s already-changed climate.
Vermont could become the first state in the country to enact such legislation. New York, California, Massachusetts and Maryland are all considering similar bills, as is Congress.
The fossil fuel industry has opposed the measure and vowed legal action if it becomes law. In March, the American Petroleum Institute (API), which represents oil and gas companies, called the legislation "bad policy" and argued that it "may be unconstitutional" for holding corporations responsible for what society at large has done.
Evidence has shown, however, that the fossil fuel industry knew about the climate impacts of burning coal, oil, and gas for decades but hid those understandings from the public as it fought efforts to curb emissions or mitigate the damage being done.
"If you contributed to a mess, you should play a role in cleaning it up," Elena Mihaly, vice-president of the Conservation Law Foundation's Vermont chapter and a supporter of the bill, toldThe Guardian.
Like many other states, Vermont has suffered expensive damage from climate-related weather events in recent years—costs that proponents of the bill say should not be shouldered by the state alone when it's so clear the fossil fuel industry's role in creating the current crisis.
"You see towns across the state underwater, and communities and businesses financially devastated. The reality of the climate crisis just really comes crashing home," Ben Edgerly Walsh, climate and energy program director for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, toldNBC News following passage in the House. "These are facts that we are dealing with in real-time that we need the financial resources to deal with."
If Scott vetoes the bill, the state House and Senate lawmakers would have to muster a two-thirds majority to override his rejection.
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